


Limelight

by ShadowSelene (Shadowdianne)



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-14 05:14:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29040723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowdianne/pseuds/ShadowSelene
Summary: “It reacts to light.”Well, she thought, grim smile as she sat back up, tiredness and the plausible reality of being engulfed in darkness before the sun rose, that was something else.And she had become much more curious if Lex’s “guest” was, indeed, human.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	Limelight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [waknatious](https://archiveofourown.org/users/waknatious/gifts).



> This is not edited and was written at four in the morning -some of it- so apologies for any glaring typo. Might edit it later if I find the time for it. Made by an idea waknatious back in tumblr had of Lena Luthor as this alchemist, I merely grabbed the concept and plastered it all over my wordprocessor because that's what one does when your friend nags your brain with AUs and dnd-adjacent thoughts while you are working on your own campaign.

The flame of the candle burned bright but the stem was close to its mid-section, where Lena had previously scribbled down a bright black mark if only, she had muttered to herself while surrounded by beakers and metal frames that twinkled in silvers, so she had some resemblance of the passing of time. Fingers curling and then stretching as she tried to alleviate the faint pain on her joints and neck, she glanced at the splash of light that pooled around the candle, its scent not pungent but obvious if she dared to give her any attention.

Despite her trick she couldn’t quite remember how long she had spent glancing at the vial that had been handled to her last time the door of her laboratory -no, not hers, but who cared now for such a concept- had been opened by the man who liked to call her his sister despite the sinister gleam on his eyes and the promise of something far worse than a contract being singed to him about whatever she might find within the liquid’s secrets if she didn’t quite deliver. Standing as she tried to ease her discomfort, she eyed the books and diaries she had been used ever since she had eyed the enclosed vial she had been given: the wax of the seal verdant and unnatural as it now curled and crinkled. The symbol of the ouroboros had greeted her from the seal of course, just like every other vial ever given to her by him: the promise of something eternal that went beyond any family name or resemblance of normalcy that happened to exist beyond the tomb of her own making she now called “home”.

There had been very little on the books as she had soon found out, after her initial assumption that he must have made a mistake since the sloshing droplets had been as red as blood and holding a similar opacity. Because, as she had soon realized, while almost identical, the liquid wasn’t blood but something else.

“Replicate it.” He had said to her through clenched teeth and madman-like eyes and Lena had thought again on the slowly being distilled poison behind her other half-finished works that laid in wait for her to use it.

“I still need to finish with the alkahest recipe…” She had grabbed the vial, however, knowing that she wouldn’t be able to refuse its acceptance. What she had thought could be blood glinted once and she blinked, taken aback but curious.

“Doesn’t matter.” His voice resonated and brought her back to him with the promise of a slowly dragged out pain if she wasn’t fast enough. “This has priority, be fast.”

He had closed the door behind him just as he always did, as if he couldn’t get out of her presence quick enough. With an eye on the candle that had been new then, Lena had seated herself in front of her desk, starting what had become a veritable rabbit hole the longer she studied what, obviously, wasn’t blood at all.

It was the details lost to those who would blink too fast: she had become to understand. The liquid seemed to morph if she didn’t pay attention to it long enough as if changing properties just when she looked elsewhere. There was a chameleonic concept to it, as if willing to morph itself not entirely but good enough for her tests to come up contradicting one another, malleable, unusable. She wondered where he might have been able to get ahold of such substance but the answer came in the form of a memory of last week’s clops against the stone that formed the patio beyond the rooms and the veranda and the wooden details created specifically for the family whose money overflowed so many pockets. She had been looking into a recipe for a tincture at the time, darkness and rouge enveloping her as she liked to think herself as opposed to that dammed verdant green, she had heard the sounds of the horses, the rapid descent of someone else into the maze that grew from the manor on itself, like a fungi that just grew and took without expecting to be asked to give anything in exchange. She had closed her ears to the sound, as she had started to do after so many had lost their lives and had kept on working: glass prickling her skin, opening wounds no one else would be able to see.

If the liquid, she had realized, had seemed like blood and could have been treated as such the possibility that would better link to the theory could only be…

That it had been taken by someone capable of holding it inside, someone whose life-force might be as mutable, as strong, as the liquid itself.

She blinked back to reality and the present, her jaw set, her fingers grasping the back of her chair with force and ire. The droplets of light were beginning to become smaller: she would need to be careful with the flame; it would be hours before she could even think on asking for another one and the fuzzy edges on the corners of her eyes told her that it was the middle of nighttime already: the sun a line and the moon a smiling eye on an otherwise unreachable sky.

Moving closer towards the now open vial she scrambled for some remains of the wax, careful to put the bits into a copper spoon she then approached to the flame: a seal and a nap, a quick one, before he came back or send anyone else in order to know, to interrogate. She halted then, half-movement, as the light of the flame hit the liquid directly rather than in an oblique line as before, the sea of diamonds it created on its wake making it iridescent for a moment before they were gone. As if liquid sundrops, as if gold and lead.

“ _It reacts to light.”_

Well, she thought, grim smile as she sat back up, tiredness and the plausible reality of being engulfed in darkness before the sun rose, that was something else.

And she had become much more curious if Lex’s “guest” was, indeed, human.


End file.
